Lois Gail Lerner (born October 12, 1950) is an American attorney and former United States federal civil service employee. Lerner became director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2005, and subsequently became the central figure in the 2013 IRS targeting controversy in the targeting of conservative and liberal groups, either denying them tax-exempt status outright or delaying that status until they could no longer take effective part in the 2012 election. Both conservative and liberal groups were scrutinized . Only three groups - all branches of the Democratic group Emerge America - had tax exemptions revoked . Lerner resigned over the controversy, pled the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer questions on her actions before Congress on the grounds that her answers would tend to incriminate her, and then later argued that her sworn testimony in a lawsuit resulting from her actions should be sealed forever from public disclosure. The Obama Administration attempted to clear itself of wrongdoing in a 2015 investigation that claimed to find "substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia" but "no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution."
